Rifle

Relatives rifles were pischal and harquebus. They look, of course, not as elegant as modern rifles, but acted very well. Although their use was quite difficult - harquebus can weigh up to 8 kilograms was wick castle. Shot from the base. But there were serpentine trigger, then wheeled and silicon locks, unitary cartridge - and the rifle has taken a modern look.
Name «rifle» went from cutting stem gun, which appeared in the 16 st century. Then his style screw pischalyu. This thread rotated bullet, giving it a more direct trajectory.
Vintovannoe gun had a good battle quality. A large range of targeted fire allowed to keep the enemy at a distance. For close combat rifle to adjoin bayonets or knives. A relatively small proportion guns (up to 5 kg) makes it easy to transport, movement on the battlefield and shooting Sighting. For the cavalry, motorized and special parts was issued a kind of rifle - the rifle. He had a smaller length for ease of use, however, have the worst TTH.
In the 1st world war rifle was the only type of personal weapons. But during the Second realized the need for a machine. At shorter distances machine is accurate, and rate more than pays for missteps. All the same rifles continue to operate as have an advantage over large distances. But a decade after the war, they were finally driven out. Now rifles in combat situations are used to defeat the purposes of single sniper.
In the USSR, for this purpose in the second world series rifle used Mosina. It supplied 3.5-fold view that allows a fairly accurate fire on targets up to 1.3 km. The only drawback was its loading a patron, because installation of an optical shop obstructed sight. Now standard rifle Russia - SVD, adopted by the back in 1963.